Up with Vexillology

Vexillology sounds rather like an obscure branch of tropical medicine, which for the vexillologists of the world must be rather vexing. But the almost universal ignorance of the discipline is understandable, since it is so new. Vexillology, the study of flags, has only just fluttered into the dictionaries, and as 57 delegates from 14 nations gathered in London last week for the Fifth International Congress of Vexillology, the mood was unmistakable: today Webster's, tomorrow the world. For the rampant proliferation of flags round the world has established vexillology as a new fast-growth enterprise.

The founder and chief prophet of vexillology, Political Scientist Whitney Smith, coined the word from the Latin vexillum, or military standard. Smith set up the Flag Research Center in Winchester, Mass., to keep tabs on all the new national emblems and to provide a learned voice on the aesthetics of flag design. The time was the early 1960s, when the newly independent nations of Africa were running such a profusion of new standards up the flagpole that it was impossible to know what to salute. Today the goal of his organization is to introduce new standards of quality in flag-making to a world still mired in vexillological primitivism.

Ideally, vexillologists would like to see a kind of central consulting agency set up for flag designers of fledgling nations. In this way, they argue, the world might be spared embarrassing errors, as when Indonesia in 1945 unfurled a new flag of red and white bars that turned out to be both an exact replica of the ensign that Monaco has flown since the 13th century and the Polish flag upside down. As a model of what a flag ought to be, Smith points to that of Guyana: a boldly simple design with a red triangle and a gold arrowhead on a green field. It just happens that the banner was designed by Smith himself. "I wrote to [Guyana's former Prime Minister] Cheddi Jagan, as I always do to leaders of newly independent countries, and sent in a design," he recalls. "Nothing was heard for a while until finally a Guyanese flag arrived in the mail, and I said, 'My God, that's my flag.' "

It might be argued that vexillologists, being relative latecomers to the flag scene, have already missed most of the action. Not so, the vexillologists insist. There are new nations in the making all the time, and there are old ones that could stand a change of banner. The U.S., with its stars grown altogether out of hand, could well be placed in the latter category. A return to the original thirteen stars would, the vexillologists say, "be a fine birthday present for the U.S. at its bicentennial." Not to mention pleasing to the seventh congress of vexillologists, which is scheduled for 1977 in Philadelphia.

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